SOVIETS SHAKE UP FALTERING OIL INDUSTRY

Howard A. Tyner, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The Kremlin has launched a major campaign to shake up its faltering oil industry and get flagging production back on target.

The task is a huge one, though, and many Western analysts say it may prove to be impossible. Annual oil output goals in the Soviet Union, the world`s largest oil producer, haven`t been met for nine consecutive years.

The harshest blow came with the recent release of figures showing that in 1984 Soviet fields registered their first postwar production drop, falling to 12.26 million barrels a day from 12.32 million barrels in 1983.

Many of the Western analysts here consider this a sign that Soviet oil output has peaked, and they say Moscow`s leaders must reconcile themselves to a prolonged period of production stagnation and gradual decline through the rest of this century.

The subject is of vital concern to Soviet planners because oil exports to the West account for about 60 percent of this nation`s foreign-exchange earnings.

Foreign exchange is especially crucial now to finance Soviet imports of grain to make up for last year`s harvest disaster and of new technology and machinery that can only be purchased from Western manufacturers.

Outsiders who monitor the world petroleum industry have been debating for almost a decade the long-term prospects for Soviet oil, but it has only been in the last year that Soviet officials finally have acknowledged in public that they have severe problems.

The clearest indication of high-level worry came last month, when Oil Minister Nikolai Maltsev ''retired'' at age 56, four years before the usual retirement age, and was replaced by former Gas Industry Minister Vasily Dinkov, who is 60. All indications were that Maltsev was fired.

Several days later, Politburo member Vladimir Dolgikh, whose responsibilities include supervision of heavy industry and energy, traveled to the key western Siberia oilfields and blasted local officials there for falling down on the job.

Judging from accounts published here, the major difficulty has been managerial failures. Because of this, existing oil wells haven`t been exploited fully and efficiently, and no new fields with adequate reserves are being opened to replace old sites as they are pumped out.

The focus of interest is the Tyumen Fields in western Siberia, developed in the 1960s and early 1970s and now the source of nearly two-thirds of total Soviet output of crude and condensate.

For three years, this important installation has come in below production targets, which has wrought havoc with total nationwide output plans.

A series of press reports from Tyumen in recent months has spoken of power blackouts (2,000 in 1984 alone); a shortage of repair teams, resulting in numerous wells standing idle while awaiting spare parts or maintenance; and a severe manpower turnover.

''So far, neither (Communist) party organizations nor the industrial administration have produced a stable system of personnel management,''

Dolgikh told a meeting of the Tyumen area`s party leaders.

He complained of a lack of infrastructure--shortages of housing, schools, hospitals, recreation sites and utilities--that discouraged workers from staying in the area despite hardship-post salary bonuses.

''This sort of thing results in labor rotation and a lack of qualified specialists,'' Dolgikh said. ''Under new conditions, when industrial extraction will be mechanized and automated, we can`t rely on inexperienced personnel.''

An article last year in Pravda, the party daily, made clear that bureaucratic confusion and careless work had brought about a ''scandalous state of affairs.'' Millions of rubles are wasted every year because equipment, pipe and tools are misused, it said. It spoke of one oilfield where only one well in four was operating because of malfunctions.

The Western experts also say a lack of coordination between the numerous governmental bodies responsible for discovery and extraction of oil contributes to the problem. An example has been a running dispute between the Ministries of Geology and Oil over production drops in the Komi Republic, an oil-rich corner of European Russia near the Arctic Circle.

Oil Ministry officials have accused their counterparts at the Geology Ministry of spending too much time looking for new drilling sites in remote parts of Komi, thus reducing prospects for developing more accessible areas near known reserves.

In reply, the Geology Ministry has accused the Oil Ministry of purposely underestimating the reserves in western Siberia in order to mask production shortfalls.

''The overall picture isn`t exactly one of all pulling together to solve a common problem,'' one of the Western experts said. ''There`s a lot of confusion out there.''

Heads already have begun to roll. In his speech, Dolgikh revealed that in the Tyumen region since 1981 almost every director of every oil and gas extraction complex, geological firm and construction project had been replaced, apparently in a bid to bring about sweeping changes.

Even so, the Western experts say, Moscow faces some basic problems that draconian personnel policies can`t solve. Much of its estimated 9 billion tons of oil reserves, for instance, lies in remote areas, where the enormous cost of extraction makes retrieval projects uneconomical.

Furthermore, Soviet geologists so far simply haven`t been able to discover any more superfields such as those they found in the 1950s and 1960s. Numerous smaller sites are being exploited, but at a high cost.

''Unless they find more oil that is easy to get or they throw in huge amounts of manpower and funding, they`re going to have to be satisfied with current production levels,'' one of the experts said.

A total of 43 billion rubles, or about $50 billion, of investment funds has been designated for the oil industry for the 1981-85 planning period, but even if that money is spent, it will be difficult for the Soviets to keep output above 12 million barrels daily from this year, according to one U.S. study.

No one believes the current 1985 target of 12.56 million barrels is anything more than wishful thinking.

Few of the experts see dire short-term consequences as a result of the production decline. From the late 1970s, the USSR has been developing its huge natural-gas reserves and building up nuclear power plants as alternative sources of energy.

A major energy conservation program also was launched to cut down on enormous waste.

This allowed oil export levels to be maintained and even increased as the world oil market softened, so that foreign-currency revenues have remained relatively stable. Increased gas exports to Western Europe can take up the slack, at least in the foreseeable future, the experts say.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin hasn`t accepted oil production stagnation as an accomplished fact. When Lionel H. Olmer, U.S. undersecretary of commerce, was here in January, his Soviet hosts said the purchase of oil and gas extraction technology was at the top of their shopping list among Western suppliers.

Sale of such items to the USSR was halted as part of the trade embargo measures implemented by Washington following the 1979 Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan. The shortage of the sophisticated equipment obviously has contributed to oil production problems, the experts said.

Olmer hinted at a news conference, though, that at least some of the Western restrictions might soon be lifted. A sign that American businessmen are optimistic is the trade show planned for Moscow next fall involving oil and gas and pollution-control equipment. It will be the first all-American display of its kind in the Soviet capital since the early 1970s.